President Donald Trump<\/a> has already urged it to quadruple soybean purchases.<\/p>\nBut looming over the talks is the memory that parts of the 2020 “Phase 1” deal, struck during Trump’s first term, went unfulfilled, in particular a commitment by Beijing to buy an additional $200 billion worth of U.S. goods over 2020 and 2021.<\/p>\n
China is the top market for U.S. farmers, taking $29.25 billion of their goods last year, and buying more is a powerful lever for Beijing to help close the huge trade deficit Trump frequently uses to justify tariffs.<\/p>\n
With China the world’s largest soybean importer and the United States the second-largest grower, U.S. sales of the oilseed were worth $12.8 billion and China bought roughly half of all U.S. exports.<\/p>\n
Much of that trade is now frozen, thanks to Chinese tariffs on U.S. soybeans and other farm products.<\/p>\n
A deal could see China ramp up purchases beyond last year’s levels. Agricultural imports have fallen by more than a quarter since peaking at just over $40 billion in 2022, roughly equal to the annual commitment in the Phase 1 deal.<\/p>\n
WHAT COULD HOLD UP A DEAL?<\/p>\n
However, reaching or exceeding those levels will require U.S. exporters to displace competitors, especially in Latin America, where China increasingly buys agricultural products.<\/p>\n
The U.S. share of China’s agricultural imports slid to 12% in 2024 from 20% in 2016, while that of Brazil rose to 22% from 14%, Chinese customs data shows.<\/p>\n
A major shift back towards U.S. supply would reverse a years-long campaign to diversify away from Washington that began after Trump’s first trade war.<\/p>\n
Part of that campaign is a push to cut reliance on overall food imports, which would complicate prospects for any ramp-up in buying.<\/p>\n
In April, China unveiled a plan to trim by 10% soymeal inclusion in animal feed by 2030 – a move that could slash annual soybean imports by about 10 million tons, or nearly half of U.S. soybean exports to China last year.<\/p>\n
WHAT ROLE WILL SOYBEANS HAVE?<\/p>\n
The size of the soybean trade is likely to make it a big part of any Chinese commitment to buy more U.S. agricultural products. But the window is rapidly closing for purchases of this year’s U.S. crop.<\/p>\n
China normally imports U.S. soybeans between September and January, but it has not pre-booked any cargoes yet – a delay traders warn risks U.S. exporters missing out on billions if Chinese crushers keep opting for South American cargoes instead.<\/p>\n
Benchmark Chicago soybeans are trading close to their lowest since 2020, weighed down by a lack of Chinese buying and expectations of a bumper U.S. harvest.<\/p>\n
U.S. soybean farmers wrote to Trump this month pleading for a deal with Beijing and warning of dire economic consequences if China continues to shun American crops.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Ella Cao, Lewis Jackson and Naveen Thukral; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Ella Cao, Naveen Thukral and Lewis Jackson BEIJING\/SINGAPORE -Grains traders globally are closely watching talks between the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115668,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[75142,23,550,144,3,942,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-115667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-agricultural-products","tag-america","tag-beijing","tag-china","tag-news","tag-president-donald-trump","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}